Djodi, Cairo, Egypt

"The meaning of home to me is changing yet again. My "home"used to be wherever I was at the moment. It's better for me to say I have two "homes". The city and home I live in, and the country and cities where my children and parents are."

What's that "d" doing in front of your name anyway? It all started when I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in N'djamena, Tchad back in the 70s and the Russian doctor wrote me a prescription. She spelled my name Djodi, and I was hooked - hooked on seeing things through a different lens, or perhaps it was the lens I'd always been looking through as a child in New Jersey, a college student in Kansas and a transplant to Seattle.

After living in Tchad, Sudan, Rwanda, Vermont, Mali, Madagascar, and the UK, I now live in Cairo, Egypt, a 20 million person metropolis that mixes modern with ancient and archaic at almost every turn. Donkeys pulling carts carrying broken down cars, the X-Factor on TV Thursday nights, medieval citadels towering above highways jammed with cars and trucks loaded with cows on their way to slaughter.

What don't you know about my city? That until three years ago it was probably the safest city of its size on the planet. On any planet. You could walk alone in the street until 4 in the morning without fear. That it was always possible to buy anything you wanted at midnight or 2 a.m. but near impossible to find a grocery open at 7 a.m. to get some milk for your morning coffee. That Egyptians can create a party anywhere anytime, yes, even in the middle of an ongoing Revolution.